http://lisefrac.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] lisefrac.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] breakinglight11 2012-04-18 02:58 pm (UTC)

I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but everyone has this problem, in some degree or another. I'm inclined to think it only gets worse as you get fatter, but maybe I'm just bitter. The one that always gets me is the fact that clothing manufacturers assume that if I have large breasts I must likewise have ginormous arms. This is not, I assure you, the case.

I don't actually know the history of that "confluence of measurements" you mention, but I can pretty much guarantee that, while they may be the mean of common women's measurements (I'm not actually sure they are - they may just be scaled based on some arbitrary proportions), a mean is unlike a median in that it does not itself have to exist in the data set. What I'm saying is that at the end of the day those measurements may not in fact match ANY woman, even though they were made from EVERY woman.

Also I tend to suspect we only have those means--if they exist at all--for smaller sizes, and many items of clothing are just scaled up from that. Hence the big boobs, big arms phenomenon.

I guess all this is a further reason to make your own clothes?

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